The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories eBook

If any man doubts my word now, I will kill him.
No, I will not kill him; I will win his money.
I will bet him twenty to one, and let any New York
publisher hold the stakes, that the statements I have
above made as to the authorship of the article in question
are entirely true. Perhaps I may get wealthy
at this, for I am willing to take all the bets that
offer; and if a man wants larger odds, I will give
him all he requires. But he ought to find out
whether I am betting on what is termed “a sure
thing” or not before he ventures his money,
and he can do that by going to a public library and
examining the London Saturdayreview of October
8th, which contains the real critique.

Bless me, some people thought that I was the
“sold” person!

P.S.—­I cannot resist the temptation to
toss in this most savory thing of all—­this
easy, graceful, philosophical disquisition, with his
happy, chirping confidence. It is from the Cincinnati
enquirer:

Nothing is more uncertain than the value of a fine
cigar. Nine smokers out of ten would prefer an
ordinary domestic article, three for a quarter, to
fifty-cent Partaga, if kept in ignorance of the cost
of the latter. The flavor of the Partaga is too
delicate for palates that have been accustomed to
Connecticut seed leaf. So it is with humor.
The finer it is in quality, the more danger of its
not being recognized at all. Even Mark Twain
has been taken in by an English review of his innocentsabroad. Mark Twain is by no means a coarse
humorist, but the Englishman’s humor is so much
finer than his, that he mistakes it for solid earnest,
and “lafts most consumedly.”

A man who cannot learn stands in his own light.
Hereafter, when I write an article which I know to
be good, but which I may have reason to fear will
not, in some quarters, be considered to amount to much,
coming from an American, I will aver that an Englishman
wrote it and that it is copied from a London journal.
And then I will occupy a back seat and enjoy the
cordial applause.

(Still later)

Mark Twain at last sees that the Saturday REVIEW’S
criticism of his innocentsabroad was not
serious, and he is intensely mortified at the thought
of having been so badly sold. He takes the only
course left him, and in the last galaxy claims
that he wrote the criticism himself, and published
it in thegalaxy to sell the public.
This is ingenious, but unfortunately it is not true.
If any of our readers will take the trouble to call
at this office we sill show them the original article
in the Saturdayreview of October 8th, which,
on comparison, will be found to be identical with
the one published in thegalaxy. The
best thing for Mark to do will be to admit that he
was sold, and say no more about it.